


His Daughter

by FleshDust



Category: The Witch (2015), The Witch (2016)
Genre: Demonic Elements, Dialogue Heavy, Early Modern English Dialogue, English Dissenters, Father-Daughter Relationship, Human Female/Satan, Human Female/The Devil, Loss of Virginity, Magical Elements, Multi, New England, Puritanism, Religious Elements, Sexual Content, Tentative Underage Warning, Voyeurism, Witch Coven, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 01:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8268310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleshDust/pseuds/FleshDust
Summary: Three years have passed since Thomasin was set free of her old, hated life. Yet lingering fears remain of the Puritan existence that she might have been forced into. Her new Father visits her to assuage her fears, and to show her how precious he holds His Daughters.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written back when I saw the film for the first time. Haven't had the time to edit and post it until now. The dialogue follows the style of canon dialogue, heavy with thees, thys, and thous. If you are an ~~Old English~~ Early Modern English aficionado and spot any errors as far as my ~~Old English~~ Early Modern English pronouns go, kindly let me know.
> 
> The underage warning is tentative, as I'm not sure how old Thomasin was during the events of the movie. Whatever the age she was, add three years to that.
> 
> Thank you to Sæthryth for kindly informing me that the language spoken is not Old English, but Early Modern English. Thanks again!

The moss was green and living and smelling of earth beneath her body where she laid, watching two squirrels bicker in the canopies above her.

The colors of the world had returned once again, rendering the forest alive with countless shades of green. Shade-loving flowers dotted the forest floor here and there, and other little blooms fought for space in the spots where the trees allowed dappled sunlight in at certain times of day.

Thrice had the seasons changed since Thomasin had been free, and thrice had she thought of the people who were of her blood.

_William. Katherine. Mercy. Jonas. Caleb. Samuel._

Their bones had yellowed and turned brittle at the place where she had once lived. Thomasin had only returned a few times to fetch items for her new home in the forest, and she had found herself feeling nothing when gazing upon the body of the man who had once been her father where it laid broken underneath a pile of wood.

With time, his carrion had dried out, the skin stretching and then cracking like vellum over the bones until it peeled away to drift in the wind.

Katherine’s ruin still lay sprawled in front of the house where she had left it, and if she had felt nothing when looking upon the corpse of the man who had been her father, she felt less than nothing as she gave a cursory glance at the carrion of the woman who had borne her. And the woman who had tried to kill her.

They had disdained her so, she knew this. Katherine had always, _always_ been swift to blame her for anything ill that befell their household, be it in England where the glass windows of their home kept the wind at bay, or in this stinking hovel in this wonderful New World that was anything but.

“Foul harridan,” she hissed at the bones. “Never didst thou offer me ought but contempt.”

She cast another glance at the remains under the wood pile.

William had actually once held a place of love in her heart. Father, oh father; his eyes soft when he looked upon her and then the gleam of his teeth through his thick wiry beard as he offered her a rare smile. Those were the times when Thomasin felt singular and perhaps even loved.

But he had smothered the embers of her affection when the issue of the silver cup had arisen. Katherine, true to form, had not been late in accusing Thomasin for its mysterious disappearance. Father and Caleb both had been mum on the matter even though they knew very well the truth of it. They had sold it for coin, yet it was Thomasin who received payment in the bitter currency of accusation.

And Father had said nothing, until he was forced to do so.

She had heard his whispered words of selling her to another family, and she knew very well what that meant for her. Servitude, eyes downcast, modesty, eventually wincing and groaning with discomfort under some grunting, sweaty hog of a husband who was more like to offer the back of his hand rather than offer tender words. And then fading away, shackled and subdued, with vile little urchins clinging to her skirts, while praying to some god that had never heeded her, and there would be naught that she could do to avoid such a fate.

Oh yes, these were the plans of the man that had once been her Father, for such was the way of the world, and for all of whatever love he had once carried for her, he would eventually consign her to such an abominable existence.

And then, of course, she had turned witch in his eyes at the urging of Katherine and Jonas and Mercy, those nasty little jackanapes whose sole wish in life seemed to be to see her suffer. And at the time, it had not even been so.

Thomasin had realized then that she had only one true Father, and it was He who now had her love. She had not been privy to His company more than three or four times since she became His Daughter, yet she felt His dark love with her always, in her heart, in her blood, and in the very marrow of her bones.

It was a deep, scorching love, profound and addicting and everlasting. Sometimes she could hear His voice on the wind, whispering of how precious she was to Him, and of all the things that He would bring her should she only ask.

While His seductive words of all the things she could have had tempted her at first, she had soon realized that she did not need excess. Her Sisters had helped her build a little cottage of stone and wood in a glen where a small, clear forest stream bubbled.

They brought her cloth and some crockery and salt, and their smiles were blooms of love and kinship. Yet they would not disturb her unless she called for them, for which Thomasin was grateful, for above all things, her solitary freedom was what she loved best in her new life.

Sometimes she climbed the wood pile next to the cottage to reach its mossy roof where weeds and herbs had taken root of their own volition. The herbs were rendered fragrant as they crumbled underneath her body where she laid, watching milky little stars wink in the night sky and with her nose full of the scent of purslane and clover and wintergreen.

Twice He had brought her things for her new home, even though she had not asked. She was more than capable of fashioning most household items that she might need out of materials gathered in the forest. Anything that she could not make for herself, she had brought from the hated hovel that had once been her home. Food, likewise, was readily available in the forest, and she had even dug herself a little root cellar which she kept conscientiously stocked with many growing things that the forest yielded in the summer.

She had been lying in the bed that she had lugged from the hovel with the help of her Sisters when a soft clinking and an unmistakable bleating outside in the dusk roused her. Black Phillip had been waiting for her outside, sprawled sleek and fat next to a pile of something that glimmered in the dying sunlight.

Thomasin had not been able to contain a happy gasp when she touched the glass pieces. They had been no bigger than both of her hands together, but oh, they were so beautiful, with colors that they had never even had in England.

Four of them there were; one was the vibrant green of the tree canopies, its brother the muted, muddy green of moss. Another was the deep blue of a midnight sky and the last one was the blue of the sea, some exotic ocean far away that she had never seen but somehow knew existed.

Under Black Phillips’ watchful eye she had knocked a few stones out of the sides of her little lodge. The brook nearby yielded thick mud for her project. When the dawn started to creep in, she was able to admire the tiny windows that she had tacked into the walls of her home. The light of the dawn created colored spots inside of her home and it made her smile.

She had spent the rest of the morning lying bare in the grass with Black Phillip, content in the presence of her true Father, whatever form He may choose to approach her in. She stroked His gnarled horns and haunches and belly with hands that were still coated with dry mud and giggled when His tongue lolled out in a most laughable manner at her attentions. She fell asleep, molded into the shape of the he-goat’s spine, feeling the fiery heat of His blood soak into her as she slept.

The other time He had brought her a plump, beautiful milk cow and she had shrieked with joy, embracing the animal. Black Phillip had brayed a few times at that, skipping and cavorting about the glen for a few moments while she laughed, returning then for a few pats of her hand before departing anew.

_Wouldst thou like to live deliciously,_ her Father had asked her when she became His.

Her answer had been yes, and now she lived thus, for nothing was more delicious to Thomasin than her freedom of the patriarchal world which she had always loathed, the world that saw her as little more than a work horse and breeding stock; the world that groveled under a god that delighted in their suffering and praised men and disparaged women.

She stretched now, smiling at the squirrels above her that had finished their bickering and were now spiralling, up and down and hither and yon around the tree trunks that hid her secret little paradise from the world. Not that anyone had come looking for any of them. As far as the plantations were concerned, the family was banished and left completely to their own devices.

Thomasin rose from her mossy little bed and gathered her long hair, knotting it around itself at the nape of her neck. The plentiful gossamer strands were dotted with twigs and leaves here and there from the forest floor, but it bothered her not. In a way, it made her feel a part of the forest.

Her little cottage awaited her in the dusk when she returned. She had fashioned a makeshift pouch out of the front of her shift in which to carry the mushrooms and roots and a few bird eggs that she had gathered along the way back. Her cow greeted her with a warm bellow where she grazed near the little stream, her udders swollen with milk.

After putting away the items that she had foraged, Thomasin milked the cow. The milk that emerged from the cow’s teats was alabaster and almost thick as cream. She drank it warm from her milking pail, thanking her bovine friend for her daily gift.

“I shall gather clover from the roof for thee on the morrow,” Thomasin told the animal as she wiped her mouth. “Methinks thou may enjoy such a treat. There was an apple tree in bloom at the edge of the forest this spring. They should be ripe now. I shall venture there, and I shall share them with thee.”

The cow did not understand her words, she knew, but she understood the warmth of her tone. She was a healthy animal, never beleaguered with ills nor had any predator ever touched her. Neither did she seem to need to produce a calf for her milk to flow. She simply lived in the little glen with Thomasin, roaming free as she would, grazing in the forest and drinking from the stream.

Her healthy pink udders were always rich with milk that could be worked into butter, and Thomasin gorged herself on loads of it on little loaves of bread that she made from wild grains and baked on hot stones by the hearth fire.

She had built her bovine friend a little lean-to to protect her from rain, but the animal seemed little bothered by the elements. Yet when the bitter winter snows fell, Thomasin would beckon her into the lodge where a warm hearth fire always blazed.

“Such care thou show thy gifts,” a deep voice suddenly whispered in her ear.

When she spun around, Black Phillip was there, His coat healthy and shiny as obsidian, watching her with horizontal pupils set in gold. He spoke again then, His voice smooth in her mind.

“My beloved child.”

“Father,” she whispered, awed. “I thought… it has been so long since thou last spoke to me. Have I displeased thee?”

“Never, little one,” the he-goat answered. “Let us go inside.”

The black animal made His way into the lodge, and when Thomasin entered a few heartbeats later, the goat was gone and in its place stood the man that had taken her as His Daughter, tall and handsomely dressed. It started her, a little, to see the shape of a man. She had found that she disdained men after living under their yoke for most of her life, and she thought that this form was less preferable than the he-goat.

And yet, she cried with joy: “Father! Blessed am I to be in thy presence once more!”

The man simply smiled, His thin mustache making the funniest little quirk as He did so.

“How may I serve thee, Father?” she asked Him after a little while, unsure.

“Precious one,” He said, His voice deep and warm, “I ask no servitude of thee.”

He seated Himself at the table and benches that she had dragged there from the farm. Thomasin joined Him when He beckoned for her to do so.

“I simply wished to see thee once again, my pet, my most promising of witches. Tell me, child, hast thou found joy in thine new life?”

“Oh Father, Yes! I never thought such joy possible. I despaired when I thought of the fate that lies in store for womenfolk here in this New World, the most terrible, deep despair…”

“I know, sweetling. I gazed upon the depths of thine misery, and I tell thee true: No one shall ever force thee to such a fate. No repulsive wandought to spread thy legs to, nor any calumnious brats to render thine spirits into ash.”

“I thank thee,” Thomasin said. “I can think of no darker fate.”

They stayed silent for a few moments until she looked up and spoke anew, noting that His gaze hadn't left her.

“Father, may I ask a question?”

“Aye.”

“I know mine soul is thine, but what happens once I depart this world? Will there be pain or suffering… or will… will I burn?”

He laughed, a deep, rich sound; sweet and soothing like honey.

“Child, not all suffer in the abyss. Those devoted to me spend their eternities indulging in any pleasure that they might.”

“But… what of… before I knew thee, I offered my prayers to God, as I was taught to do. I was… told to disdain thee; to avoid thy favor. I prayed many times every day. Dost this not offend thee?”

“Thomasin, beloved,” He said, reaching across the table to cup her chin in one hand, “I am not a jealous being. Thou may do whatever thou wish on this Earth, for thy soul is consigned to me. Thou _chose_ to gift it to me. And I hold mine gifts utterly precious, and those who give themselves to me willingly hold the highest positions in the realm that thou have been taught to call Hell.”

He straightened then and removed his hand from her face.

“Damned are the hypocrites, these Puritans, these Anabaptists and Quakers; presenting themselves so holy and pure, yet their souls are rotting black with sins unanswered and ripe with the stench of secret corruption. It is they who are dragged, wailing and struggling, to the pits to be broken upon the wheel. No suffering awaits thee, for thou art mine beloved child and in the Abyss, mine children find paradise.”

She rose and sat down next to Him, embracing Him warmly for His words.

“Father,” she breathed against his throat, “May I kiss thy hand?”

He drew back and offered her His fingers, which smelt clean and of spices unknown, and she kissed them. Before she realized it, she had craned her neck and sought His mouth, and His lips closed over hers without hesitation. But when she felt the brush of His mustache, she broke the kiss and drew back a little.

“Forgive me, Father, I…”

“There is nothing to forgive, my love,” He said, His voice low, but not cross. “I shall never have anything from thee that thou does not offer.”

“My Sister-witches told me that… that thou may come for me in the night, to… to claim my body in the ways of men.”

The words tasted bitter of Thomasin’s tongue. When her Sisters had told her this, a painful spike of anxiety had pierced her heart. To her, such an union was analogous to the marriage that she might have been forced into one day. Even though she loved her Father and would do anything to gain His favor, she wasn't keen on opening her legs to any man to mark her as territory, like she was simply a field to be sown.

Her Father smiled, and said: “Thou know better than to think me a man, child.”

“Oh, Father, I know, yet… you _look_ like one. I cannot abide men. I have seen them treat their women worse than beasts. Backhanding them on a whim, and none think anything of it, as if she is deserving of it! I have seen how they fill the bellies of women with seed, and the pain and the blood the squalling babe that comes thereafter.”

She got up, agitated and overwhelmed with memories of her past dystopia and the things she had seen at the plantation where they lived prior to their banishment. And indeed, the difference she had seen in the treatment of men and women in her own home. Pacing, she continued her rant. Her Father watched her silently, His face still.

“... And they have no other lot in life! _We_ have no other lot in life! Birthing babes, working our fingers to the bone, cowering before God and husbands to avoid more pain, of one kind or the other. Men! I cannot abide them! Even my false father would sell me like livestock, to be beaten and mounted whenever a man wished it!”

She plopped down on the bench opposite her father, trembling with anger but a little embarrassed about her outburst. A treacherous tear slithered down her cheek, warm and annoying, and she knuckled it away.

“Thomasin,” her Father murmured, “My shape may look thus, but I am not a man. I would never sell thee like cattle, nor do I wish to seed thee to bear my spawn nor work thee to death. I shall burden thee with no prayer, nor sins, nor groveling. Thou art free to do whatever thou wish, my precious Daughter.”

“Truly, Father?”

“Truly. And thy body is thine to do with as you wish. ‘Tis true, I've shared pleasure with thy Sisters, but not all of them. The ones who do not wish it, shall not be forced. Thou art all my Daughters evermore, and the will of a Daughter of mine is sacrosanct.”

It was almost too much for Thomasin. Even though she had lived free for three years since she became His Daughter, she did not realize until now how much the shackles of the world she had left behind still weighed upon her. She had truly believed that this newfound freedom of hers was just a fleeting thing, and somehow, she was to be snatched away and forced into marriage and a lifetime of submission and drudgery despite it all, which would have been even worse after a taste of freedom. But the shackles were no more, she realized; her Father had crumbled their heavy links into dust with mere words. She smiled.

“Thou art mine true Father. My beloved. Thy may claim my body, should it please thee."

“I would share the pleasures of the flesh with thee, but I shall have nothing of thee that is not offered with love,” He replied.

_Share_ , He told her. Thomasin had no idea if the rutting business was a sharing experience. All that she knew of it was the grunts and cries she had heard of her former mother and father, and every now and then, a babe, naked and raw and red, would follow some time later. The animal couplings that she had seen were the same. And the woman was always pinned down, subservient; vulnerable. Any questions on her part pertaining to carnal coupling had always been angrily struck down by Katherine as she snarled that young women need not know such things until their wedding night, lest they be harlots.

Before she had a chance to speak again, He rose and held His hand out to her.

“I do not claim, sweetling; I _share_. If thy offer is indeed spoken with love, I shall share myself with thee.”

She nodded tremulously and took His hand, but gave a frightened cry when black smoke, like floating ink, started to leak out of His eyes, nose, and mouth. She screwed her eyes shut hard at the sight. She smelt a rush of blood and ash and roses and when she opened her eyes again, the man had been replaced with a being that was more than a man.

On two hoofed feet it stood, near seven feet tall and the color of smoke, somehow solid yet insubstantial. A great black crown of horns grew from its skull, the horns nearly identical to that of the he-goat. White, glowing specks in blackened eye sockets watched her, and the thin lips below parted in a smile that revealed sharp, silvery teeth.

Still frightened, Thomasin looked down at their joined hands. Cradling her small white palm were long, slender black fingers. His hand was dry and very, very warm.

Her Father really was no man, she realized. His visage did frighten her, but it was far more agreeable than that of a man. Her Father was endlessly beautiful. And her Father was endlessly terrifying. She straightened a little to show that she wasn't afraid (not too afraid, anyway), and parted her lips in a careful grin.

“Does my shape displease thee, Daughter?” He asked, His voice still the same, simultaneously silky and rough.

“No, Father. It frightens me, a little. But it is also fair. Like a thunderstorm. I fear the lightning, yet it is so beautiful, is it not?”

“Indeed, dear heart,” He replied, seemingly pleased. “Now, I much desire whatever thou wouldst share with me.”

Thomasin blushed a little and she felt a strange heat bubble within her as He led her outside. His dark, horned crown scraped along the ceiling beams of her cottage and He had to lurch over in order to pass through the door and into the glen outside where the blue light of the moon greeted them. The forest around them was alive with shadows, black shapes twining around the trunks and making sounds not of the Earth.

Thomasin removed her shift for Him once again, with no hesitation at all this time. As she laid down in the grass, she glimpsed her Sisters in the shadows of the forest that circled her glen. Their bodies, young and buxom, old and frail, fat and thin, were enveloped by the dark tendrils that twisted about, clutching and prodding her Sisters with fingers made of darkness.

She saw a swift shadow with glowing eyes the color of sunset shove one of her Sisters against a tree. It lifted her with little effort and pinned her against the rough bark, wrenching her legs wide and thrusting deep. For a moment, it frightened Thomasin until she heard her Sister cry out in delight as the creature impaled her onto its otherworldly flesh. She had never heard a woman produce a sound of such obvious love; a sound of such obvious lust. Her Sister clung to the creature, mouth agape yet smiling with pleasure as the shadow bucked into her.

“Yes, my sweet,” her Father growled above her where He kneeled at her side. “Behold the pleasure of thy Sisters, for they have arrived to behold thine.”

And truly, more Sisters started to engage with the shadows and the dark creatures were not late to acquiesce, pleasuring her Sisters in ways that Thomasin had never been able to even fathom. It made her cheeks feel hot and her body feel weak.

“Father,” she mumbled quietly, “I am a maid entire. I have never… “

“I know. I am humbled that thou would allow thy Father to show thee the ways of the flesh. Dost thou still wish to share thyself with me?”

“Yes, Father,” she whispered, “Show me, please.”

She opened her legs to receive Him, as she had seen Katherine do when her former father wished it, but He shook His great head when she did, moonlight filtering between the horns of His crown.

“I shall not take thee in the manner that thou despise. I shall not force mine flesh into thee so crudely.”

Thomasin gasped when shadows trailed from the woods toward them, tendrils creeping across the soft grass until they reached her. Her Father clasped one of her hands to reassure her as the dark wisps approached. Gently, they caressed her breasts and belly and hips and her most secret places until she could do little but to whimper at the sensations that they roused in her. And all the while, her Father held her hand and watched with His white eyes, their glow radiating brighter as He watched the shadows touch every part of His Daughter.

Finally, when Thomasin thought that she could take no more, when her flesh felt swollen and slick and wanting, her Father reclined on the grass next to her. She did not understand at all until two of her Sisters approached, lifting her up by her downy armpits, positioning her above Him. Her Father grasped her rounded hips gently with strong, large hands and then she was lowered slowly onto Him.

Thomasin could not help the tears and wails that emerged from her when she was breached and the pain bloomed within her. But her Sisters carefully pushed her down until she was fully seated astride His hips with His flesh inside of her, hot and hard and painful.

Her Sisters bade her to hold still for a moment in order to lessen the pain of her broken maidenhead. They petted her then, caressed her neck and chest and belly and threaded gentle fingers through her hair, loosening the knot that she had made of it earlier. One of her Sisters sang a crooning, silent song in a language unknown that soothed her hurts just as much as the soft hands of her Sisters did.

Just as the pain started to lessen, her Father reached for her face and wiped away her tears with His black fingers.

“Beloved Daughter, I thank thee for this honored gift. Now, please thyself upon my flesh.”

And so she did. Her Sisters helped her move her hips at first until she found her own motion, and when she did, her Father rose, His upper body against hers, His arms enveloping her. Thomasin groaned loudly with the pleasure of it, and even the burn of pain that remained but somehow felt like it belonged. She grasped her Father’s horned crown as she rode Him; as _she_ mounted _Him_ , weeping and moaning, until they both found rapture.  
  
Thomasin cried her Father’s true name at her moment of crisis, for somehow, His name was suddenly echoing in her head. Her scream matched the bestial roar of her Father as He bucked into her one final time, and for a moment, His eyes shone so white that she thought they would blind her.

Afterward, her Father stroked her hair while He languished inside of her quivering, awakened body. After a little while, she climbed off Him. The maiden’s blood on her thighs was streaked with His seed and it glimmered in the light of the moon.

“My sweet Thomasin,” He whispered where He laid next to her in the moonlit grass. “ _Filia ex infernum.”_

Thomasin smiled, tired and aching, but it was a good ache. It still throbbed within her like a heartbeat when she drifted to sleep. The music of her Sisters’ continued pleasure and the lusty growls of creatures of the abyss was in her ears as she sank into her slumber. It was a most comforting sound.

When she woke in the tentative predawn light, her Sisters were washing her with soft, wet cloths. One of her Sisters, her hair a rich auburn, was between her legs, suckling the mixture of her Father’s seed and her blood from her thighs.

Black Phillip laid in the grass nearby amidst little flowers that had just awoken from their nightly slumber, opening their tiny petals skyward. The he-goat watched as her Sisters finished washing Thomasin’s body and then embraced her with smiles and laughter and love. His golden eyes followed them as their feet left the earth and floated up, up, up into the blushing sky to dance freely among the treetops.


End file.
